Heart of Steam & Rust (Empires of Steam and Rust) Read online

  So she lay down on the bed, head aching from all the subterfuge. She closed her eyes and focused her mind, clearing it of the clutter she’d accumulated since coming to this world, emptying it of her fears, her desires, her lusts, discarding as much as she could to make her brain open to receive the thoughts, the information, she needed to find.

  And as her mind expanded, she waited—waited for Pyotr to return, waited to make her next move.

  TEN

  Lina!

  She awoke with a start, certain that something was terribly wrong.

  How long had she been asleep? The clock on the wall said that Pyotr’s hour-and-a-half was not yet up, but … Where was he?

  She concentrated, trying to sense his presence … But he wasn’t in the building—she felt sure of it.

  A flash inside her head. A stab of pain. An image in the fog: Pyotr fighting … injured.

  Damn him!

  He’d gone investigating on his own, just as he had when she’d taken her bath!

  She climbed out the bedroom window onto the fire escape. The iron latticework was rickety and in ill repair, but it held her weight. She descended as quickly as she could, knowing this would be faster than running downstairs through the hotel. She didn’t wait for the spring-loaded ladder at the bottom of the second floor to extend all the way down. Instead, she leaped to the ground as soon as she had enough clearance.

  She landed hard, twisting her left ankle, but she ignored the pain and broke into a run.

  Where was Pyotr?

  She concentrated, trying to remember her psychic vision and match it to what she knew of her surroundings.

  Another flash of pain brought the picture into focus. An alley behind the Black Dog, right next to the docks, near where she’d been killed.

  Pyotr was struggling for his life! She felt it with every fiber of her being.

  Faster! She had to run faster!

  The adjoining streets lay empty as she skidded into the alleyway. Fog drifted in from the river, shrouding the scene in gray mist. She counted two figures lying unmoving on the ground … no, three … and one of them was Pyotr.

  A hulking, dark-clad figure in a trench coat stood over him, bloody knife in hand. The man turned as Lina approached and showed a crooked grin sporting a golden tooth.

  Rostov!

  Lina reached for her gun. But her groping hand found nothing inside her coat pocket. It must have fallen out while she slept!

  The man moved toward her, cackling in a deep voice. “No witnesses.” He slashed his knife toward her throat.

  Lina ducked under the cut, rolled forward, and pulled the knife from her calf sheath.

  Her skirt tangled her legs as she tried to rise. The man cut at her again.

  The dress made her too slow. She turned, but the knife slashed across her left shoulder, leaving a three-inch long wound.

  Again, a flash of pain, but hers this time, not Pyotr’s.

  The big man came in, trying to overbear her and force her to the ground.

  She fell back, seemed to lose her footing.

  Rostov smiled, looming over her, preparing to plunge his knife into her chest.

  She twisted and thrust upward with all her might, stabbing her knife into his neck, just below the Adam’s apple.

  Rostov gasped as blood sprayed the front of his grimy coat. His fingers went limp, and the knife slipped from his hand and clattered to the ground.

  Lina heaved, and he went over backward, crashing to the docks.

  Rostov lay there gasping, clutching at the wound, unable to stop the bleeding.

  She watched him die, enjoying each moment as his life leaked out onto the moss-slick pier. Then she recalled the purpose of her mission.

  Grabbing him by the collar, she stared into his feral eyes.

  “Was it you?” she asked. “Did you try to kill me?”

  “H-help…!” he sputtered, eyes darting frantically from side to side.

  But his mind told her the truth: Yes. He had pulled the trigger. Even with her disguise, he recognized her, and the sight terrified him. There was more, though. He’d been acting on orders.

  “Who hired you to do it?” she demanded. “Who tried to have me killed? Tell me and I’ll help you. I’ll stop the bleeding.”

  His mouth moved, but only blood came out. He wanted to tell, wanted her help, but…

  She could read only one thing in his mind—a word she didn’t recognize:

  Yeren.

  And then he died.

  Lina let go of his lapels, and Rostov’s body slumped to the ground. Anger burned inside her. Why couldn’t he have lived just a few moments longer?! That was all she needed to pry the secrets out of him. Then she remembered…

  “Pyotr!”

  A pang of guilt washed away her anger. How could she have forgotten? A few quick steps brought her to his side.

  He’d been stabbed, more than once, but he was still alive.

  “Pyotr!” she cried, reaching out to him with her mind as well as her voice.

  As she cradled his head in her lap, his eyes creaked open. “Th-they jumped me,” he said. “I found Rostov in the Black Dog … followed him … but I didn’t see his men.”

  Lina looked at the other two bodies lying on the dock. She sensed no life in them. “You did all right,” she said comfortingly, “but you should have waited.”

  “S-sorry I botched your plan.” His eyes began to roll back into his head.

  She shook him gently, all the while probing with fingers and mind, trying to locate the worst of the wounds. “Did Rostov say anything? Did he tell you who hired him to kill me?”

  “I… Lina … I’m sorry,” he said, and then he drifted into unconsciousness.

  With one hand, she applied pressure to the wound in his chest—the worst one. Had it pierced his lung? She thought it might have.

  With the other hand, she retrieved his gun from where it had fallen nearby.

  She fired five of the Nagant’s seven shots into the air.

  Even in this squalid place, that should bring the authorities soon enough.

  ELEVEN

  Lina looked up as Lieutenant Vasily Yakov strode up the corridor to where she and Section Liaison Petrenko sat outside of Pyotr’s room.

  Yakov snapped to attention and saluted. “Captain.”

  She saluted back. “Poruchik,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came down with the package Pyotr ordered for you,” Yakov said. “How is he?”

  “He’ll survive,” Petrenko replied.

  “Probably,” Lina added.

  “What about you?” Yakov asked, eyeing her bandaged shoulder.

  “I’m all right.”

  “She gave better than she got.” Petrenko beamed as he said it. “It will be a great pleasure never to have to deal with Andrei Rostov again.”

  Yakov sat down in the chair next to Lina. “Rostov…” he said, rolling a cigarette between his fingers, “…I seem to remember that name from the investigation of your shooting.”

  “Yes,” Lina replied. “He’s the one who shot me. He won’t be doing it again.”

  “Dead, then?”

  “Yes,” Petrenko confirmed.

  “Well, that’s good,” Yakov said, lighting his cigarette. “I’m sorry we didn’t track him down earlier. Could have saved you and Gregorov some trouble.”

  Lina nodded. “But Rostov wasn’t acting alone. He was a hired killer.”

  Yakov blew a perfect smoke ring toward the hospital ceiling. “Really? So we’ve still got some work to do.”

  “With luck, no,” Lina said.

  “Oh?”

  “Pyotr started to tell me something before he passed out. I believe he got the information on who hired Rostov before Rostov’s men jumped him. He’ll reveal who’s behind this plot when he wakes up.”

  Yakov blew another smoke ring. “Well, that’s good to know.”

  “All we have to do is wait,” Petrenko said.

>   “Yes,” Lina agreed. “We’ll soon have the traitor within our grasp.”

  TWELVE

  The traitor opened the door to Pyotr’s hospital room slowly, noiselessly. He slipped quietly inside and then, just as silently, closed the door. He drew the Luger from his coat and aimed it at Pyotr, resting quietly in the hospital bed.

  Before he could pull the trigger, Lina said:

  “Nice to see you again, Poruchik.”

  She flicked on the table lamp next to where she’d hidden, waiting, in the shadows.

  Lieutenant Yakov whirled, aiming his gun at her chest. He looked her up and down, slightly surprised to find her unarmed.

  Lina smiled and focused her steel gray eyes on him.

  “Pyotr didn’t find out anything from Rostov, did he,” Yakov said.

  “No.”

  He smiled ruefully. “All the trouble I went through to cover things up, only to be undone by a simple trick.”

  “You really should be ashamed of yourself, falling for it.”

  “I am.” His left hand fidgeted nervously with his jacket pocket. “I really could use a smoke, but I don’t want to leave any clues for whomever looks into your death—deaths, I should say: yours and Pyotr’s.”

  “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that,” Lina said.

  “Probably not,” he agreed. “The way things are, I can almost certainly make sure that I’m assigned to the case myself.”

  “The way you were assigned to interrogate me when I was recovering.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the way you were assigned to investigate the bombing of my apartment. That’s what it was, isn’t it? A bombing, not a rocket attack, as you told everyone. You put the bomb in my briefing package. That box was just similar enough to the one that you brought here to jog my memory. You couldn’t chance planting a bomb in a package twice, though. You intended to blow me up at my apartment and cover up the evidence. You couldn’t risk killing me in the Section hospital. Access to me was too restricted there, and there were too many people watching.”

  “Of course. My rotten luck that you happened to be taking a bath when the timer expired.”

  Lina’s eyes narrowed. “Worse luck for Anna.”

  He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and stuck it, unlit, in his mouth. “Casualty of war. One thing I can’t figure out, though, Pavlina: Why aren’t you dead? I would have sworn that Rostov shot you through the heart.”

  “So you were watching.”

  “From a safe distance. Why didn’t you die? Even the police and ambulance reports said you showed no signs of life.”

  “Some people are harder to kill than others.”

  He pointed his Luger at the center of her chest. “I’ll make sure this time.”

  Again, she smiled. “I think not. Rather, I think you’ll tell me everything you know—before you kill yourself.”

  Yakov tried to pull the trigger, but found he couldn’t.

  Lina’s eyes burned brightly as she tightened her grip around his mind. “Tell me, traitor, why did you do it?”

  “I…” he began, and tried to resist. She saw it anyway.

  “So, you were using your position to sell secrets—and weapons—to the Prussians. That seems a dangerous thing to do, Poruchik. But why? You didn’t seem to profit from it much.”

  She bored in deeper but met surprising resistance. “Who are you really working for, Vasily Yakov?”

  She saw a flash of something: a clean white laboratory, cages, experiments … And then it was as if a steel curtain descended over his mind. The impact staggered her.

  “You can’t make me tell,” he said through gritted teeth.

  She pushed back. “What is yeren?”

  Sweat poured down his face, but she got nothing.

  “Who is behind this?”

  Again, nothing.

  Frustration built within her. She made him put the gun to his head. “Is someone in the government pulling the strings? Rasputin, maybe, or…” She ventured a guess. “Freund?”

  Yakov laughed—a coughing, desperate laugh—until she gave a mental twist and strangled it.

  “You don’t know anything!” he managed to gasp. “For all your witchcraft, there’s nothing more you can do to me. My mind—the part of it you really want—is closed to you!”

  “Not all the parts I want. Do svidanya, Poruchik Yakov.”

  A tiny nudge.

  His finger twitched on the trigger.

  BLAM!

  Yakov’s brains splashed against the room’s sole door; his body slumped to the black-and-white-tiled floor.

  For Anna.

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have done it. Perhaps the Section could have gotten more out of him with other means. Perhaps, if she worked on him longer, she could have pried out the truth.

  But it didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to be on this world long enough for it to matter. Still, the question vexed her: How had his mind been locked against her?

  In the hospital bed nearby, Pyotr stirred.

  She crossed to his side, stepping around the body on the floor, and took his hand. His fingers felt cool, but very much alive.

  He opened his eyes and gazed at Lina, and a wave of love—and relief—washed over her.

  “I … I thought I’d never see you again,” he said weakly.

  “I thought you just wanted a scar to match mine,” she replied, and brushed her lips against his cheek.

  He tried to laugh, but ended up coughing violently.

  “Don’t,” she said, feeling guilty that she’d started it—guilty at a whole multiplicity of things, in fact. She laid her hand on his chest and willed his body to come back under control. The coughing stopped.

  “Just try to rest,” she whispered.

  “Did you get Rostov?”

  “Yes. We did. And the traitor as well.”

  He smiled and closed his eyes. “It’s over, then.”

  “Not quite,” she whispered in his ear. “Tell me what you know about a certain Dr. Freund.”

  THIRTEEN

  The train sat in a ramshackle railroad yard east of Perm, near the Ural Mountains. It had taken Lina half a week in Moscow to track the train down, and another three days to reach it. An airship would have been considerably faster, but she didn’t want anyone aboard the train to know she was coming. Thanks to her psychic gifts, no one who’d aided her investigation would be talking. None of them remembered helping; some didn’t remember meeting her at all.

  Pyotr would have come if she’d asked, despite the fact that he was still recovering. He’d been moved from Vilnius to the same secure hospital she’d first woken in. She didn’t want him tagging along, though. She didn’t even want him to know what she was doing. She’d made an excuse about needing to go away for a few days, to try and replenish her witchy supplies. He’d accepted her explanation without question. She’d kissed him and told him she’d see him in a few days, which was a lie.

  She was going home.

  Cautiously, she left her “borrowed” car and approached the train. It blended in with the old railway yard perfectly. Its design was at least twenty years out of date, and rust covered much of its exterior. Yet, something about it set off a tingling in Lina’s brain.

  A deep thrumming came from the locomotive’s engines—new engines, not old—and the scent of ozone permeated the air. She could not peer inside the train’s dirty windows, and she saw no sign of engineers or other workers. The entire yard lay deserted, save for the rusting hulks of other trains. Yet, as she walked closer, the train began to move of its own accord.

  It rolled down the track away from Lina, and she had to sprint to catch up. It kept moving, building steam as it went. She managed to snag the rear railing. The impact nearly yanked her arm from its socket, but she pulled herself onto the hindmost steps just in time. Another moment and the train would have been beyond her grasp, perhaps forever.

  She paused on the rear platform, catching her breath, clear
ing her mind, preparing. Did they somehow know she was coming? Was that why they’d started to pull out of the station? No. How could they? It was only coincidence. She would proceed as planned.

  Her investigation had turned up almost nothing on Doctor Freund, but it had revealed that he spent nearly all of his time on the train—probably the very train Rasputin had spoken of. Freund was a shadow; he had no official government connections. Finding and boarding the train was the only way she would get to talk to him—the only way to obtain what she wanted.

  Now that she had arrived, her scheme was simple: She would find the good doctor, wherever in the train he might be, and force him to take her home.

  She drew her revolver and opened the door that led from the observation platform into the rearmost compartment.

  The insides of the car surprised her; they looked practically new, unused. The interior was generously lit and decked out with first class seats, polished oak tables, and lushly carpeted floors. She smiled. This was the level of luxury expected by top officials. The outside of the train car had been merely a front. No doubt remained in her mind now: She’d come to the right place.

  Quickly but cautiously, Lina moved through the deserted lounge car and into the next. This one housed a kitchen—all gleaming stainless steel and ordered pots and utensils. After that came several compartments filled with maintenance equipment. Every one lay deserted, and in every one the lighting grew progressively more dim.

  The compartment beyond maintenance was almost pitch black, and housed long, burnished steel chemical tanks. With each car Lina moved through, the powerful thrumming of the engines grew louder, stronger.

  The next compartment door didn’t open as easily as the earlier ones had. She had to holster her gun and pull it aside with both hands, and as soon as she had it open, it began to close again.

  Light blazed out from within, but she slipped inside quickly as the door slid shut behind her. It took a moment for her eyes to adapt to the light. She seemed to be in a laboratory of some kind. At the far end of the room, a slight, balding man in a lab coat worked at a bench filled with electronic equipment.